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Anthony Levandowski, the former head of Uber's self-driving program, speaks to reporters in San... [+] Francisco in December 2016.

AP Photo/Eric Risberg

Uber has fired Anthony Levandowski, the self-driving car engineer at the heart of its high-stakes legal fight with Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo, for failing to assist the company to meet a federal judge’s order demanding the return of stolen technical data.

The ridehailing company said it took the action because Levandowski wouldn’t cooperate with Uber’s internal investigation to recover the materials in question. Uber had pressed him “for months” to do so, but he failed to meet its deadline, a company spokesperson said in emailed statement. Levandowski’s reluctance is due to the fact that he’s asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the case.

Levandowski was a star member of Google’s self-driving car project for years. In February, Waymo accused him of downloading more than 14,000 technical documents from an internal Google server weeks before he resigned from the company. Waymo’s suit argued that Uber and Ottomotto LLC, the company Levandowski co-founded immediately after leaving Google and bought by Uber in August 2016 for $680 million, benefited from the trade secrets Levandowski took.

Uber already restricted his participation in the program in April, tapping Eric Meyhofer to lead most of the group’s day-to-day duties at that time. Meyhofer now heads all aspects of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group, with employees previously managed by Levandowski now reporting to him, Uber said on Tuesday.

Waymo, created in December 2016 to commercialize Google’s autonomous car R&D, learned that Uber might have its technology when it was inadvertently included on an email from an Uber supplier detailing a LiDAR sensor circuit that was identical to Google’s own design. (LiDAR is a laser radar vision design that’s essential to help driverless cars see the world in high-definition, 3-D images.)

In his review of the case this month, Alsup also referred it to the U.S. Justice Department for possible criminal actions by Levandowski.

“The evidence indicates that Uber hired Levandowski even though it knew or should have known that he possessed over 14,000 confidential Waymo files likely containing Waymo’s intellectual property; that at least some information from those files, if not the files themselves, has seeped into Uber’s own LiDAR development efforts; and that at least some of said information likely qualifies for trade secret protection,” Alsup wrote in granting an injunction against Uber sought by Waymo.

For its part, Uber said in a statement today that it’s pressing on with development of unique self-driving vehicle technology and will not wait for the final outcome of the case being heard in San Francisco. It's been testing a fleet of self-driving vehicles, with two technicians in the front at all times, in Pittsburgh since last summer and this month expanded its R&D operations with the creation of an artificial intelligence lab in Toronto.

From Los Angeles, the U.S. capital of cars and congestion, I try to make sense of technology-driven changes reshaping transportation, cities and how we get around. I've

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From Los Angeles, the U.S. capital of cars and congestion, I try to make sense of technology-driven changes reshaping transportation, cities and how we get around. I've tracked global automakers, advanced vehicle tech and environmental policy for more than two decades, including 15 years at Bloomberg, and squeezed in stints in the financial and corporate worlds. What's your story?